Category: Agriculture: Livestock: Sheep

Sunday 28th July 2024

In an episode called Calendar, made in 1980 and first broadcast in 1981, as part of the 21st anniversary of the Out Of Town series produced by Southern Television, we see a short piece of film – just 87 seconds – glimpsing Wilton Sheep Fair with a commentary by Jack Hargreaves. This episode was re-broadcast, today, Sunday 28th July 2024, on Talking Pictures TV, and is available to view (in the United Kingdom and Ireland) until 4th August 2024 on the Talking Pictures TV Encore website.

The episode, in which Jack says “Today, more and more people are not doing what their parents did,” has a running time of 24 minutes and 38 seconds. It features the subjects for calendars; a pony riding competition for children in the New Forest; a riding lesson for the sons of sheikhs in a desert in the Persian Gulf; grandfather clock making by the Tribe family who had a shop on London Bridge (Jack notes that a current member of the family wears a digital watch while doing the craftmanship that has been carried out since the time of the Great Fire of London); making lace and how bobbins were once love tokens; lobster catching off Swanage which mentions Tom Harris who had the contract to supply the Savoy Hotel; sea fishing 45 miles off Poole Harbour where there are unchartered wrecks; catching conger eels; a riverside garden maintained by a busy wife; a poultry show in the ballroom of a Bournemouth hotel; fishing for barbel on the river Kennet; and the three lives of the extraordinary mayfly.

Wilton Sheep Fair is the penultimate item in the programme, commencing at 17 minutes and 21 seconds from the start. The glimpses of the sheep fair commence with a long view to Wilton which Jack describes as “a little town in the middle of Wiltshire.” Then we see some of the haulage lorries with the names, addresses and telephone numbers painted on their doors – from as far afield as Blagdon; Lyons Gate, Cerne Abbas; Stanford In The Vale, Faringdon, Berks; and Mere, Wilts. Two well known hauliers’ names are seen: A.E. George of Bruton, Somerset, and A.J. Stokes & Sons of Codford, Wiltshire.

Jack, who is bearded, wears glasses and smokes a pipe, tells us that there has been an annual sheep fair at Wilton ever since the days of sheep being brought many miles over downland, with dogs to help the shepherds.

We see the booth of the auctioneers Woolley & Wallis. Referring to the name Woolley, Jack muses “I always like to believe the auctioneer collected that name many years ago, as a nickname from the shepherds, when his great-great-great-grandfather was selling sheep.”

We also see what Jack calls “the other fascination” for him: the hurdles for the pens, stacked in a barn and being used on fair day. He says “It’s the only place I know where there are over 10,000 handmade hazel wattle hurdles. It’s amazing they go on and on using the same [type of hurdle] that was made in Anglo-Saxon times, because it is the best thing to pen these thousands and thousands of sheep every year for the Great Wilton Sheep Fair. I wonder how long [the use of] wattle hurdles will last? Someone will want to find a plastic substitute for those before we go on very long.”

Jack sums up Wilton Sheep Fair by saying “It is a scene I can’t resist. I shall see it again next year and I hope I shall go on seeing it every year for the rest of my life.”

Jack Hargreaves died in the Winterbourne Hospital, Dorchester, on 15th March 1994. He was aged 82.